BONG TV ROCKS

  The Case of the Missing Red Stripes A Stoner Christmas Mystery A Budville Mystery Theater Original Nobody noticed at first. That’s how these things always start. It was December 23rd, the kind of cold that makes the smoke hang in the air like a bad decision. I was posted up in the back room of Benny’s Bodega & Tree Lot, rolling something medicinal and pretending not to listen to Bing Crosby for the fifth hour straight. That’s when I saw it. A candy cane. White. Minty. Clean. Too clean. No red stripes. I checked another. Same thing. Then another. Whole damn box looked like it had been bleached by the Ghost of Christmas Sobriety. I knew then—this wasn’t a supply chain issue. This was a job . Scene One: The Evidence Candy canes don’t just lose their stripes. Red’s not decorative—it’s structural. Tradition. Balance. The sweet meets the sharp. Yin meets yang. Without red, it’s just a breath mint with a hook. Someone had stripped the stripes. ...